Little Things Give You Away
by Sublime Angel
Summary: What do you do when your life is slowly fading away? What do you wish for? All he ever wanted was for the pain to go away. For everything else to go away, but not her. Never her. All he wanted was for her to be here, with him, at the end...


**Disclaimer:** Ok, I am so tired of putting this all the time because we all know it!

**Song:** _'The Little things Give You Away'_ by Linkin Park, off their latest album: _Minutes to Midnight_, which surprisingly wasn't all that bad. It was definitely different and not what I expected but it wasn't completely disappointing. I love this song, that's for sure though!

**A/N:** This came to me the first time I heard this song. The words just stuck with me, and I couldn't let go of how beautiful it was. So here it is, yet another IchiRuki because my brain won't process anything other than that!

And this is my first try at something a little angsty because I don't know if I'm capable of writing a good bit of angst concerning them. I do the romance and normal stuff pretty okay but I'm better at writing angsty poetry than fanfics. So please don't be too hard on me! Thanks! Read & Review cuz you know you love me! (Don't lie, you know you do, cuz you **all** say it when you review so ha!)

**P.S.** And sorry that I've been away for so long but hopefully this makes up for it and I hope you all got my message, via my P.R.O. _**mysteryredhead**_.

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**The Little Things Give You Away**

It was quiet. It would be quiet tonight.

There was no Rukia. Not anymore. Not for a while. Maybe not ever again.

He was silent. What could he do?

Nothing.

For all his power, he was still powerless.

To do anything.

To help.

To save her.

It was a quiet night.

The rain started to fall.

**_Water grey_**

**_through the windows_**

**_Up the stairs_**

He lay there, staring up at the dark, raining sky, raindrops hitting him in the face like millions of angry, hating tears stabbing him all over.

_Damn it!_

Why couldn't he have done something?

What could he do now?

Why was he even bothering?

She didn't want him around. And she didn't want him to come after her.

_She didn't want him._

And that was the part that hurt the most.

And he didn't know why.

But that was a lie.

Deep down inside he knew why. He knew why it hurt him so much. So badly to the point that he wanted to cut his heart out to stop the pain from coming.

And it was pathetic really. He was pathetic. She'd never see it.

He certainly hadn't.

And now when he realised, she was already gone and it was too late.

Maybe this was the way things were supposed to work out. Maybe this was all how it was supposed to go down from the beginning. Maybe this was what they called fate. Something already written for you in the stars that you had no control over. The destiny predetermined for you that you could only sit by and watch as it happened to you and have no say in it.

Or maybe it was karma. Whatever that was. He was Japanese. They didn't believe in karma. But still maybe that was what this was. He knew enough to know that maybe he'd done something to deserve losing the one thing in his life that was constant, the chaos, the disruption, the order that she brought the day she arrived.

_**Chilling rain**_

_**Like an ocean**_

_**Everywhere**_

The rain came harder now, forming little pools on the ground around him. He could feel it soaking into his clothes, his shinigami robes getting drenched with the water.

It was cold.

He felt cold.

He couldn't move.

He didn't want to.

Would probably be better if he just drowned here (_**A/N:**_ as if that's possible on the ground you doofus!), or died from pneumonia.

Better than living knowing that he had failed to protect her.

That he had failed to live up to the responsibility handed to him.

That he had failed.

That he was a failure.

He'd never wanted anything. But the moment she left that was the moment his heart stopped wanting. She left, and took everything with her. There would be no more memories.

Nothing left.

The silence would kill him.

The knowledge that she wasn't there anymore.

That she would never yell at him again, or scream at him in that way that, despite everything, he loved to hear. Because once she did it he knew that it would happen, everyday, again, and again, and again.

Maybe it was selfishness on his part that he wanted her to still be here. To walk back through that gate and say that she was staying. To throw it all to hell...for him...

For him...

But there was nothing for him, there never had been.

_**Don't wanna reach for me do you?**_

_**I mean nothing to you**_

He was a replacement, a substitute. That was all he had been and ever would be. But even that was hanging in the balance. The last connection he had that tied him to her, to her world, to her life, even that threatened to be taken away.

Now that they had her, now that she was gone, he would not be needed anymore.

He would be replaced. (The replacement would be replaced...how embarrassing and insulting!)

By someone else. Anyone else.

And all traces of her would be gone. Any last vestige of hope would diminish within him once his gift from her was removed and returned to her.

Making him completely empty.

It would complete the void that had been created the moment she left. The moment he knew he would never see her again.

But he was full of emptiness. Of empty things, empty memories, things that belonged to the past and should have stayed there.

But he had a hard time letting go of anything. Of things that meant something to him. And the bitterness filled him again.

_**The little things give you away**_

He was selfish. Wanting her to still believe in him. Wanting her to still think of him. Even if she never saw him again.

He was a broken thing.

Used and useless.

Cracked around the edges.

Falling apart inside.

Slowly crumbling.

And he knew that maybe he really did deserve it after all. He'd never done anything to show her, to let her see, so why should he hate her now? Why should he think that he should still have her here with him? What made him think?

What?

_**And now there will be no mistaking**_

_**The levees are breaking**_

Little things had sometimes made him literally stop breathing around her.

The day he caught her looking at him from up in their classroom. When she thought he hadn't been looking at them. But he knew, he'd sensed her presence the minute they walked into the courtyard. And he knew then she'd been thinking about him.

The day she ran up to him after school with that look in her eyes, on her face, and he thought he would break in two at the sight of her. When he knew that she was hurting inside and still they left it unsaid.

Or that time she fell asleep and he was too tired to bother moving her and they slept on his bed together. He'd held her tightly then. And thought she knew. Thought she could tell.

Or when she'd raised a leg to kick him and he grabbed it instead and pulled her to him. For a split second he'd thought he saw something finally flicker in her eyes. That she finally was maybe starting to get it. To realise just what was happening to him.

Guess he'd been wrong all those times.

But he was still selfish and still feeling for her through all the damned rain, through the cold, through the sharp pain in his chest, where he bled, bled for her.

And only for her.

_**All you've ever wanted**_

_**was someone to truly look up to you**_

But still she didn't see it. She never had.

And it ached.

Not the physical pain. He'd passed going numb a long time ago.

This pain was different. Searing. Burning hot. Suffocating. Angry. Stifling.

And it was because of her.

Everything was ever only because of her.

No one else had that power. No one else ever would.

And she tried so desperately to get him to be anything other than cold. But now that she was gone, that was all he would be, all he would feel, all he would know.

Because without her, he might as well just have stopped breathing and knowing anything.

Watching people go on with their lives as normal, as though she'd never even been there. It broke him. Cut him like a thousand knives. Because he remembered her. He remembered every single thing.

Why did he still remember?

The feelings those memories brought up were more painful than being stabbed by a thousand blades...oh wait, that had happened to him not too long ago. Funny. Guess the promise of pneumonia and eternal heartbreak made you loose your senses and your memory.

And he'd really lost it. He'd lost everything, including himself, but mainly her.

He lost her.

_**And six feet under water**_

_**I do**_

All he could think of was the loss, the emptiness, that slowly began filling him beyond the breaking point. And that was more painful because at the moment he couldn't feel the cold eating at him anymore, or the blood leaving his body.

And then an amazing calm set over him, almost as though everything around him was starting to fade away, slowly and silently disappearing.

The sound of the rain, the sting of the cold, the hard of the concrete, the numbness of his wounds, the light of the darkness around him. It was all moving further and further away from his wavering consciousness, getting lighter and lighter until it all became a big bright blur.

It was blindingly brilliant. He closed his eyes to shield them.

Then the glare eased until he could open them again, but his sight was frayed and the images all seemed to be glowing, bathed in a warm white light. And for the faintest of seconds he could have sworn he was seeing a rather blurred shadow of her face looking down at him...

...with tears in her eyes.

She was crying?

He'd never seen her cry.

Why was she crying? Were those her tears he could feel wetting his skin? Each one hitting and burning him like individual stabs of ice.

No, that was the rain, pouring away as steadily as ever. Maybe he really would drown after all.

And there she was again, calling to him, but he couldn't hear a word she said. And then he didn't need to.

She stretched out a hand to him. She didn't move, but just remained there, waiting for him.

He blinked.

_**All you've ever wanted**_

Was this real? Was he hallucinating? Was he seeing god or was the devil mercilessly teasing him before he died?

_**was someone to truly look up to you**_

Then slowly, tentatively, he reached out a trembling hand to the long lost figment of his imagination with the barest glimmer of hope that he wasn't seeing things as his life was slowly ebbing away.

_**And six feet under ground**_

But she was real, and she was here.

She was with him.

She smiled down at him, with a tenderness in her eyes he had never seen before, ever. They were glazed over with warm tears as his hand tightened around hers. He whispered her name and she pressed his hand to her cheek so that he could feel her there. More of her tears came and slid down her face and onto his fingers and he knew that it was real, that she was real.

She was real, and she was here.

_**Now I**_

Here.

With him.

Here.

It was the only thing his mind could process, all that it would register.

_**Now I do**_

That he was not alone anymore.

She was here now, when he needed her the most.

They could go home at last. Things would be right again. He could feel it, her warmth spreading through him. The warmth of her light folding over him. They were together at last, not to be separated again. And that was all he needed to know. That made everything easier to bear, easier to let go. He needed nothing else as long as he had her. And now he did.

_**Little things give you away**_

He could leave now.

There was no more reason to wait.

_**Little things give you away**_

"I waited for you-to come back..." as he spoke she kissed his hand gently, "I knew you would come back..." she nodded affirmatively, "Now I can go..._we_ can go," more tears fell from her eyes, "Let's go home Rukia. I'm tired..."

And she leaned over and kissed his forehead with the gentleness of a doting lover, her lips comforting, reassuring him that it would be a peaceful journey.

_**Little things give you away**_

"Ever so tired..." his eyelids fluttering to keep open.

"Sleep my shinigami, sleep..." she whispered.

_**Little things give you away**_

"You came back..." he murmured.

His eyes drifted shut.

_**Little things give you away**_

And a lone tear slid from behind his eyes.

_I missed you so..._

__

**Little things give you away

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(sniff sniff) T.T (sniffle) so saaaaaaad!! Mommie he's gooooooneeee! Please don't hate me!


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